An App That Lets You Play a Virtual Game of Catch

Image: Joe Doucet Studio

Joe Doucet was grabbing a cup of coffee at his local shop when a common sight caught him off guard. “Everyone sitting down had this bent-over posture staring into their phone. Everyone,” he told Wired in an email. “It seems silly to say, but I was quite struck by this picture.”

Most of the time, using our phone restricts us to a flat, screen-sized world. Doucet, noticing this, wanted to create something that would allow people to interact with their phones and the real world simultaneously. The result was AMU, a perspective-bending mobile game that the NYC-based designer created with app developers at Sirqul.

You have to physically move your mobile device to catch it.

Think of AMU as a virtual game of catch. Simply put, the goal is to catch a white virtual ball with an empty circle in the middle of the screen. It all sounds easy enough until the ball disappears from the screen. “You have to physically move your mobile device to catch it,” Doucet explains. “Many people just try to tilt their phone, but that won’t get you very far.” AMU is tricky and a little frustrating until you realize that the vanishing ball leaves a visual trail, indicating how you need to move in order to catch it. The game forces players to physically move around while still concentrating on the phone screen, making it a good test of agility and eye-hand coordination (…or lack thereof). Doucet says the guys at Sirqul found the frantic movements they made while playing so hilarious that they decided to activate the front-facing camera so players can record themselves playing AMU and send it to their friends.

AMU’s design process was unusually straightforward. Doucet knew from the outset that he wanted to push the boundaries of mobile user interface by making physical space as important as the screen. From there, it was really just a matter of quickly storyboarding the game and adding the simple graphics and menus.

“Rather than start with designing a game on a screen, I thought about the game taking place all around you,” Doucet explains. “Really thinking of the screen as a portal in which to view the game, rather that being the location of the game itself.”

Doucet and Sirqul aimed to keep AMU as simple as possible from a design perspective. The game’s interface is clean and intuitive, with no instructions and minimal buttons. This simplicity helps, considering the movements required by AMU do take some getting used to. Doucet notes that while the game can be challenging at first, people typically catch on after the first couple of levels. But don’t get too comfortable. The better you get, the faster the ball moves and the harder it is to catch it.

“As of now, I’m about 20th down on the leader boards,” says Doucet. “Even I find it quite challenging after 5 or so minutes.”